Photographer #447: Brent Stirton

Brent Stirton, 1969, South-Africa, is a photojournalist and documentary photographer who focuses on issues related to conflict, health and the environment. He has traveled extensively to places as Timbuktu, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and India. He is the official photographer for the Global Business Coalition against Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Twice he visited the Ukraine, a country with the highest concentration of HIV+ people in Europe, to document the victims of Aids and the social workers and doctors who improve the lives of the infected. His goal was to humanize the disease through his photography and to lessen fear and prejudice against those who live with the disease. His work has received numerous awards amongst which are five awards from the World Press Photo Foundation and six from the Lucie Foundation. His images have been shown in a vast amount of exhibits including one at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and has been published in leading magazines as the National Geographic Magazine, Time, Newsweek and Stern. The following images come from the stories Tuareg Rebels Niger, Aids, Drugs & Uncertainty: Ukraine and Narco-wars in Afghanistan.

Website: www.brentstirton.com

Photographer #381: Almagul Menlibayeva

Almagul Menlibayeva, 1969, Kazakhstan, is a fine-art photographer and video artist who works and lives in Berlin and Kazakhstan. She studied at the Academy of Art and Theatre in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Her photography is a mixture of nomadic aesthetic of post-Soviet and contemporary Kazakhstan. In her portfolio we find portraits staged in the vast steppes and mountains between the Caspian Sea, Baikonur and Altai in her home country. The romantic and melancholic images deal with the heritage of the soviet era and the transformation of their country. She states; "I use specific ways of expression... to investigate my personal archaic atavism as a certain mystical anthropomorphism. I explore the nature of a specific... shared cultural psychic experience, which manifests itself as a specific thought-form among the people(s) of the ancient, arid and dusty steppes." Her photography is about memory and reality, "raising metaphysical questions such as Who am I? and Where shall I go?" Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the world. The following images come from various series within her portfolio.

Unfortunately Almagul does not have a website. For more images and information please visit: www.priskajuschkafineart.com

Photographer #371: Anuschka Blommers & Niels Schumm

Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm, both 1969, the Netherlands, met while studying at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Since graduating they work as a team on fashion, portrait and still-life photography. In 1997 they were asked by fashion designers Viktor & Rolf to shoot for Purple magazine. The result launched them into the fashion photography world. As this was a discipline they did not feel comfortable with, they started to play with the conventions of fashion and photography. It lead to a unique approach, often using friends as models as they were more interested in the person than the clothing. The hyper-real photographs were revolutionary in which identity and desire played important roles. In 2006 they released the book Anita and 124 other portraits, showing a collection of their work between 1996 and 2006. The portraits are presented alphabetically, creating unexpected combinations. They have been published in numerous books and catalogues as well as many of the leading fashion magazines. The following images come from various shoots within their portfolio.

Website: www.blommers-schumm.com

Photographer #366: Corinne Rozotte

Corinne Rozotte, 1969, France, is a sociologist and experimental / engaged photographer who works and lives in Paris. Her personal work revolves around the themes of confinement, industrialisation, ageing and environment. She created poetic bodies of work dealing with Alzheimers disease and the subject of obesity. In these projects she combines photography with texts. In Eyes Bigger Than Stomach the french texts clearly take the viewer into a world seen from an obese persons point of view. In her series Contre-Nature she combined a kind of human micro-society with a micro-society of animals. The double exposed images show pigs and hens in their usual environment, being an industrialized setting for a quick and cheap way to feed people. She then photographed the northern suburbs of Paris, an area filled with low income housing blocks and a population pushed into the background of our society. The two images combined create a new reality, making a clear symbolic statement on todays inhumane situation of both human and animal conditions. The following images come from the series Des Yeux Plus Grands que le Ventre (Eyes Bigger Than Stomach), Contre-Nature and Fractures of the Visible.

Website: www.corinnerozotte.com

Photographer #322: Alec Soth

Alec Soth, 1969, USA, received a BA at the Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville in 1992. In July 2011 his book Broken Manual will be released. The series, created over the course of four years, investigates spaces people would runaway to, away from civilization. He has photographed monks, survivalists, hermits and runaways. In 2004 he released Sleeping by the Mississippi, evolving from a series of road trips along the Mississippi river. It is a mix of portraits, landscapes and interiors that poetically documents this American region. Alec has released several other books and has exhibited extensively. He uses a large-format camera. In 2004 Alec became a nominee at Magnum Photos and four years later he became a full member. The following images come from the series Broken Manual, The last days of W and Sleeping by the Mississippi.

Website: www.alecsoth.com

Photographer #301: Katy Grannan

Katy Grannan, 1969, USA, is a conceptual portrait photographer who lives and works in California. She received a BA at the University of Pennsylvania in 1991 and an MFA at Yale University in 1999. In her latest series Boulevard she portrayed people at the sidewalks of the Tenderloin District in San Francisco and on Hollywood Boulevard in L.A. With light walls as a backdrop she photographed the inhabitants and passersby in the strong Californian sun. In 2005 she released her monograph Model American which includes portraits of people inside living rooms and bedrooms, but also outside in the woods, by a lake and by rural roads. The people are often in awkward positions creating a mysterious narrative. Katy has exhibited her work extensively throughout the US and several places in Europe. Her images have been published in numerous magazines and exhibition catalogues. The following images come from the series Boulevard, The Westerns and Mystic Lake.

Website: www.katygrannan.com
For more images: www.fraenkelgallery.com & www.salon94.com

Photographer #292: Gonzalo Bénard

Gonzalo Bénard, 1969, Portugal, started his career writing, painting and drawing, but when this was no longer fulfilling to him as a creator, he started with photography. He feels the need to express through his art and create a dialogue on the "oneness" of humans, gender, ritual, sexuality and life. Most of his photography is black and white and contains nude bodies creating a scene of light without distracting colours or clothing. He often uses his own body in his photography. However they are not self-portraits but representations of concepts. He uses the methods of acting to portray inner worries, wonders and his own inner worlds. His work is conceptual and sometimes provocative or ironic. Gonzalo lives and works in Spain. The following images come from the series Oneness 10, Oneness 08 and Photo-Graphic & Metamorphosis.

Website: www.gbenard.com

Photographer #267: Angela Strassheim

Angela Strassheim, 1969, USA, has worked as a forensic photographer for several years before focusing on her conceptual photography.  Her series Evidence is a collection of photographs that involve interiors and exteriors of houses where crimes had been committed. Extensive research was the key to locate 140 residences in dozens of cities. The exterior photographs show anonymous houses in broad daylight. She gained access to 18 houses to photograph the interiors using BlueStar, a reagent whose purpose is to reveal blood stains. To preserve the anonymity of all the individuals currently living in the houses she chose to include no image of the exterior when the interior is shown and vice versa. In her series Left Behind she concentrated on her childhood and adult memories. The domestic narratives show an unsettling world. Pause focuses on significant moments in a girls and womans life. Her images are sharp and hold a deeper layer. Angela received an MFA at Yale University in 2003 and has exhibited extensively. The following images come from the series Evidence, Left Behind and Pause.

Website: www.angelastrassheim.com

Photographer #250: Boushra Almutawakel

Boushra Almutawakel, 1969, Yemen, has been focusing on social interpretations of culture in Yemen. She studied in the United States and returned to Yemen in 1994. Since 1998 she has been a full-time photographer with a vast amount of projects and an impressive body of work. One of her long term projects is the Hijab Series. In this series, which consists of various sub-series, she explores women and the veil they wear. The veil has become an icon to the west of suppression, yet Boushra wants to emphasize that under the veil, women are individual and varied, and the reasons for wearing the veil vary enormously. In one of her images; True Self, she compared the veil to make-up, both masking the true identity of the women underneath. Boushra socially engaged photography is daring, beautifully executed and contains a very strong message. The following images come from the Hijab Series: Mother Daughter Doll, Veil-Unveil, Fulla and Untitled.

Unfortunately Boushra does not have a website yet, for more info and images visit: universes-in-universe.org and/or www.greatermiddleeastphoto.com

Photographer #234: Gert Jochems

Gert Jochems, 1969, Belgium, first studied sociology and international relations before studying photography at the school of fine arts in Ghent. Between 2001 and 2005 he traveled to the far corners of Russia. In Siberia he documented the people in the post communist region. In 2005 the series Rus was released as a book. In Gaza Gert made compositions of three images, each time with a wall in the middle. He also focused on Dampremie, a suburb of Charleroi in Belgium, which suffers from high unemployent and poverty. Currently he is concentrating on the theme sex, not the stylized version, but the gritty amateur world of sex and the imperfect imagery. The following images come from the series about sex that is still in progress and the series Rus and Dampremie.

Website: www.gertjochems.be & www.agencevu.com

Photographer #223: Radcliffe Roye

Radcliffe Roye, 1969, Jamaica, is a Brooklyn based and self taught photographer. He is inspired by the gritty lives of grass-roots people, especially those of his homeland of Jamaica. Roye first persued a career as a journalist but soon got into photojournalism. He worked as a stringer for the Associated Press. Now Radcliffe focuses on documentary photography. He works for numerous magazines and non-profit organizations. The following images come from the series My American Sojourn: A Southern Journey, J'ouvert: At the Devil's Playground and Farmers: A Dying Breed.

Website: www.royephotography.com

Photographer #196: AlexandFelix

Alex Gertschen, 1969, and Felix Meier, 1969, both from Switzerland and better known as AlexandFelix work as a team. They are known for staging their subjects and models, without the use of computers, with divers objects and materials. AlexandFelix create imaginative, somewhat absurd and surreal worlds. Also the background is not made by computer which is a conscious choice in an effort to make the images more vibrant and less artificial. The series 13 Queens shows how detailed the two photographers work, with much to discover in each image. The following images come from the series 13 Queens and from their Pictures portfolio.

Website: www.alexandfelix.com

Photographer #188: Francesco Giusti

Francesco Giusti, 1969, Italy, is a freelance documentary photographer. He made documentary work in many countries, from his homeland Italy to Congo, and from Haïti to Egypt. For the series Sapologie he photographed members of the SAPE (Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes). These men dress with a refined and unique style and bring some glamour into their humble environments. In the series Hotel Industria, which was also published as a book in 2006, he focused on ex-industrial areas on the outskirts of Milan that were transformed into shelters by illegal immigrants. The following images come from the series Sapologie, Hotel Industria and Agadez.

Website: www.francescogiusti.com

Photographer #159: Paul M. Smith

Paul M. Smith, 1969, Great-Britain often focuses on the theme of masculinity. In series as Artist Rifles and Make My Night he is the only person in the photograph. They are several images put into one using himself in various roles. In the series Mr Smith, he has manipulated the selfportraits to resemble those of famous male figures. In his series This is not Pornography he plays with the gender and sexuality. The following images come from the series Mr Smith, Artist Rifles and Make My Night.

Website: www.paulmsmith.co.uk

Photographer #152: Jim Naughten

Jim Naughten, 1969, UK, released his book Re-enactors in 2009. The book is about people who step out of their daily lives to transform themselves into characters from the first and second World War. The portraits are mostly three-quarter profiles with a neutral background which let's the audience focus on the details of the costumes and the expressions of the portrayed. In the book we also find photographs of tanks used by the re-enactors and wide images of battlefields. Jim has won several awards and was featured in several exhibitions. The following images come from the series Re-enactors, Tanks and Healers.

Website: www.jimnaughten.com

Photographer #149: Jeongmee Yoon

Jeongmee Yoon, 1969, South-Korea, has been working on a series called The Pink & Blue Project since 2005. She photographs children, boys and girls in their rooms with their possessions. She noticed that her daughter wanted everything in Pink and found out that she was not unusual. The work raises several issues as, for example, the relationship between gender and consumerism. Yoon's work is often inspired by human behaviour, social structures and consumerism. The following images come from the series The Pink & Blue Project, Space-Man-Space and Zoo.

Website: www.jeongmeeyoon.com

Photographer #120: Mona Kuhn

Mona Kuhn, Brazil, 1969, released her latest book Native in 2010. She lives in Los Angeles, but for this book she went back to her native country Brazil photographing the human body and natural landscapes. Throughout her career her work has been concentrated on the human body. In 2004 her first monograph Photographs came out and only three years later she released Evidence. The images from Evidence were all taken in France. The following images come from Native and the portfolios: France 2002-2008 and B&W 1996-2002.

Website: www.monakuhn.com